Walter Pall's main blog about bonsai and his work with trees from day to day. Lots of good pictures of good trees and lots of valuable information about bonsai.

Monday, January 18, 2010

wood hardener

I will bring a case of woodhardener to Noleanders Trophy. There will be a small table next to John Pitt where one can purchase it. One liter is 22 euro, half liter 15 euro and five lite 85 euro. You can expect me to have some of this stuff with me whenever I travel with my car in Europe.

WOODHARDENER ENGLISH

Woodhardener is acetone with dissolved plastic. One paints it onto dry wood with a regular painter's brush. The acetone will be absorbed into the wood and fills the dry wood cells. Then the acetone evaporates and the plastic stays in the cells. This is done again after a couple of days and possibly one more time. After that the wood is plasticized. it will stay that way and will hardly be attacked by fungi and bacteria . The decay is stopped. One applies woodhardener then once every year again if necessary. Thus the decay of wood is stopped for good at a certain point. Very soft wood that is rotting and crumbling wood as many broadleaved tree get and also some conifers can be treated too. Usually at least part of the decaying wood can be stabilized. Woodhardener is somewhat dangerous, of course. When applying one must protect hands and face, inhaling is dangerous. Open fire and woodhardener can be an explosive mixture. One must try to not touch living parts of the tree when painting. But it did happen frequently that living bark close to deadwood was touched with woodhardener without any visible harm. The soil surface should be protected form dripping woodhardener. The pot surface absolutely must be protected. Dripping woodhardener will sit on it with clearly visible transparent plastic drops. Wit nail polish remover or 99 5 alcohol one can easily remove ti though. Treatment with woodhardener is hardly visible, the surface gets a matt silky lustre which does not look artificial. Deadwood should be cleaned before applying woodhardener. Biotreecleaner is the best choice for doing the ob. It is not a good idea to try to preserve artificial deadwo0od very soon after creation. At that point you want the opposite. You want the fresh deadwood to decay for a while. Fresh deadwood is not treated at all for a few years, only biotreecleaner is used. Only after a nice patina has appeared woodhardener is applied.

it is best when the wood was never treated to do this once and them a week later again. This is like painting your very old wooden garage door. It will not be right if only once. You can apply it a third time in the first year. Then I suggest you do it every year in summer.